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Coryell Offense is the name given to the scheme
and philosophy developed by former San Diego Chargers Coach, Don Coryell. Air
Coryell was initially a nickname given to the offense of the
San Diego
Chargers under Coryell from 1978-1986, but now has come be used
interchangeably with the term Coryell Offense or the less
common Vertical Offense as a descriptive term for the
offensive philosophy Coryell developed.

With Dan Fouts as
quarterback, San Diego Chargers' offense was among the greatest
passing offenses in NFL history. The Chargers led the league in
passing yards an NFL record 6 consecutive years from 1978-1983 [1] and
again in 1985. They also led the league in total yards in offense
1980-1983 and 1985. Fouts, Charlie Joiner, and Kellen Winslow
would all be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame from those
Charger teams.

Pre-Coryell
NFL

The Pro Set was the default NFL scheme prior to Don Coryell .
While it is more of a formation, the underlying philosophy of the
Pro Set was based on becoming more successful when a team was
forced to pass by providing 1 or even 2 backs to help protect the
QB. Prior to Coryell, the Pro Set was generally a running offense
that used play action fakes to set up deep passing attempts when
defenses stacked up vs the running game.

The Pro Set features a TE, 2 WRs, and a Halfback and fullback,
often split behind the QB. While QBs can take a snap from the
center from the shotgun position, in general the pro set QB takes
the ball under center to allow for better play action fakes to the
running back.

Coryell opens up passing
in the NFL

Coryell set the league on its ear with his passing offenses
after moving up from the college ranks. He won two consecutive
division titles (1974, 1975) with the Cardinals and three straight
division titles (1979, 1980, 1981) with the Chargers, reaching the
playoffs four consecutive times with the latter team. Coryell is
the first coach ever to win more than 100 games at both the
collegiate and professional level. Coryell's offensive innovations
changed the entire nature of the league from a run-first league to
a pass-first one.

Today most NFL offenses' passing games are at least partially
based on Coryell conventions.

Former coach of the St. Louis Rams, Mike Martz, says "Don is the father of the
modern passing game. People talk about the 'West Coast' offense, but Don started the
'West Coast' decades ago and kept updating it. You look around the
NFL now, and so many teams are running a version of the Coryell
offense. Coaches have added their own touches, but it's still
Coryell's offense. He has disciples all over the league. He changed
the game."[2].

Attributes of the Coryell
Offense

The Coryell Offense is a combination of deep and mid
range passing and power running.[3]The
offense relies on getting all five receivers out into patterns that
combined stretched the field, setting up defensive backs with route
technique and the Quarterback throwing to a spot on time where the
receiver can catch and turn up field. Pass protection is critical
to success because at least two of the five receivers will run a
deep in, skinny post, comeback, speed out, or shallow cross.

Overall the goal of the Coryell offense is to have at least two
downfield, fast wide receivers who adjust to the deep pass
very well, combined with a sturdy pocket quarterback with a strong arm. The Coryell
offense uses three key weapons. The first is a strong inside
running game, the second is its ability to strike deep with two or
more receivers on any play, and the third is to not only use those
two attack in cooperation with each other, but to include a great
deal of mid-range passing to a TE, WR, or back.

The Coryell offense has the ability to both "eat the clock" with
the ground game but also to strike deep and fast without warning.
Critics argue that the Coryell offense is ill-suited for coming
from behind, as the deep pass attack will be predictable and
therefore easy to stop. However, the fact that the offense is
structured around a power running game and tall WRs who can win
jump balls and have some breakaway speed make this contention hard
to support. This offense is built not only for deep passing but
also to defeat short yardage and red zone situations. When evenly
matched, the Coryell offense can produce big drives and big scoring
efficiently. If teams sit back to cover the deep field, offenses
should be able to run the ball on them. If the defense tightens
down to stop the run, the offense can go deep. If a defense hedges
its bets by using three-deep setups with an eight-man defense up
front, the QB can pick apart the defense with 10-20 yard
passes.

Joe Gibbs won 3 Super Bowls with a Coryell offense featuring a
smash mouth running game with 3 different running backs, Hall of
Famer John Riggins, George Rogers and Earnest Byner behind a
massive offensive line known as the "Hogs" and a 3 receiver deep
air attack featuring Hall of Famer Art Monk, Gary Clark and Ricky
Sanders, known as the "Posse." Gibbs usually kept the tight end in
as an extra blocker, especially to neutralize pass rushing
specialist and Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor of the New
York Giants. Today, many Coryell offenses still reduce the use a tight end, except in the red
zone,.

Norv Turner, current San Diego Chargers head coach and former
offensive coordinator with the Dallas Cowboys, also implements a
version of the Coryell style of offense. The Turner strain of
Coryell offenses are still very reliant of a good receiving TE.
Norv Turner strains sometimes feature an 'F-Back' (formerly known
as an 'H-Back' in the 1980s), a hybrid tight end/wide
receiver/fullback/running back. An F-Back is a multi-purpose,
unpredictable tool for the offense. On any play he may carry the
ball, lead block or pass block, play as a wide receiver, or run a
tight end route. He is also part decoy, as his unpredictable role
forces defenses to keep an eye on him, thereby opening up other
opportunities for the offense..

History of the name of the
Offense

Originally it was known as the West Coast
Offense until an article about San Francisco Head Coach Bill Walsh in
Sports Illustrated in the early 80s incorrectly called Walsh's
offense "The West Coast Offense," and this mis-labelling stuck.
Subsequently, Coryell's offense scheme was referred to as "Air
Coryell" --- the name announcers had assigned to his high
powered Charger offenses in San Diego, featuring hall of famers QB
Dan Fouts& TE Kellen
Winslow[4] , and
pro bowl WR Wes
Chandler & HB Chuck Muncie. Today it is mostly known as
the "Coryell Offense", although the "Vertical Offense" is another
accepted name.

Current disciples of
the Coryell Offense

Norv Turner learned the offense from longtime Coryell assistant,
Ernie Zampese.
Turner's take on the Coryell system turned around the career of
Hall of Fame QB Troy Aikman and has proven to be very successful
with talented high draft picks struggling with the complexities of
the NFL Alex Smith.
Turner' variant is not the most robust flavor of Coryell offense.
It is a very sound, QB friendly scheme that favors taking
controlled chances, like quicker midrange post passes to WRs off
play action rather than slower developing passes that leave QBs
exposed. It is almost exclusively run out of the pro set. Turner
favors a more limited pallet of plays than Coryell and most other
Coryell disciples, instead insisting on precise execution. His
offenses are usually towards the top of the league standings, but
are often labeled predictable. His offenses tend to include a
strong running game, a #1 WR who can stretch the field and catch
jump balls in the end-zone, a good receiving TE to attack the space
the WRs create in the middle of the field and a FB who fills the
role of a lead blocker and a final option as an outlet receiver. In
Dallas, Turner made RB Emmitt Smith & WR Michael Irvin Hall
of Famers, and TE Jay
Novacek a five time pro bowler. As head coach of the San Diego
Chargers, Turner's system helped quarterback Philip Rivers set new
franchise records for single-season quarterback rating and
touchdown passes in 2008.

The Martz variant is a much more robust offense with a more
complex playbook. It is a much more aggressive passing offense,
frequently deploying pre-snap motion and shifts, with the run often
forgotten. There is much less of a focus on play action. The Martz
variant favors an elusive feature back who can catch the ball over
the power runners the Turner scheme favors. Martz credits his
influences on his variation of the offensive system to Sid Gillman and Don Coryell. Martz
learned the so called 3 digit system the offense is famous for with
how the plays are called from Turner when they were both in
Washington. The Rams set a new NFL record for total offensive yards
in 2000, with 7,335. 5,492 of those were passing yards, also a new
NFL team record. Martz tends to favor a 3 WR set with more elusive
players, a third receiver and the Half back filling the role of
middle receivers that TEs & FBs fulfill in the Turner offense.
The Martz offense works best with two elite WRs with top speed.
Unlike the Turner variant, due to the complexity of the Martz
offense, the QBs who execute it best are often the more intelligent
QBs who intuitively get what Martz is trying to do, not the elite
athlete whose team's personnel department might favor drafting with
a high draft pick. Whether it is due to the personality of the
coach or the nature of the scheme, the Martz variant has
historically had problems when teams shut down the run and make the
team one dimensional. Additionally, the QBs sometimes take a lot of
hits in this system.

Al Saunders was the former WR coach under Don Coryell in San
Diego and succeeded him as head coach of the Chargers. The Al
Saunders variant is heavily influenced by Coryell and Saunder's
former boss, former Coryell assistant and 2 time Redskins coach Joe Gibbs, who's Ace
formation (single back, 2 WRs, 1 TE, and 1 H back) was immensely
effective in the 1980s. The Saunders variant is a more conservative
variant than the Martz version, but also quite complex. It is
better suited for a veteran QB. It does not insist on size at WR or
HB like the Turner variant and as such has difficulties in short
yardage and red zone situations. It does not require a pair of
dominant fast WRs like the Martz system and is not as aggressive
attacking down the field and as such it does not score as many
points as the Martz system. It is a more sound variant than the
Martz scheme, offering a little more blocking and more run support
for the QB. The Saunders variant pulls in many Coryell concepts
that the Turner system eliminated in favor of simplicity.

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Criticisms

In general, Coryell offenses chose to focus on stretching
defenses vertically with the big passing play to push back run
defenders, rather than forcing the defense closer with short passes
like the Bill Walsh West Coast offense. As a result, it often
depends on higher risk passing game. The loss of a key WR can
totally cripple an offense by removing its ability to stretch
defenses or score in the red zone. While Coryell and Turner both
schemed and selected personnel to defeat short yardage and red zone
situations, a number of Coryell offense advocates do not take those
needs into account and suffer in those areas. Also, Coryell
offenses lose their dimensionality when defenses know the team will
not run and it needs the big play; this tends to result in low
completion percentages and high interceptions in those situations,
despite the high yards gained and touchdowns scored.

Coryell overlooked
in hall of fame voting

Several Hall of Fame players and coaches have insisted that Don
Coryell belongs in the NFL Hall of Fame for developing a philosophy
that permanently and irrevocably changed the game.

Fouts says, "He influenced offensive and defensive football
because if you are going to have three or four receivers out there,
you better have an answer for it on the other side of the ball. If
it wasn't for Don, I wouldn't be in the Hall of Fame [2]."

In John Madden's Hall of
Fame induction speech, Madden mentioned his time at San Diego State
"with a great coach that someday will be in here, Don Coryell. He
had a real influence on my coaching. Joe Gibbs was on that staff,
too[6]."

Gibbs also lobbied for Coryell's induction into the Hall of
Fame, stating "(Coryell) was extremely creative and fostered things
that are still in today's game because he was so creative. I think
he's affected a lot of coaches, and I'd like to see him get in.
[7] "

Winslow points out that Coryell had an indirect hand in the
49ers', Washington Redskins' and St. Louis Rams'
Super Bowl teams. "They call it the West Coast offense because San
Francisco won Super Bowls with it, but it was a variation of what
we did in San Diego. Joe Gibbs' itty-bitty receivers on the outside
and two tight ends in the middle, (that's) a variation of Coryell's
offense in San Diego. It's just a personnel change, but it's the
same thing. When the Rams won their Super Bowl, it was the same
offense, same terminology. For Don Coryell to not be in the Hall of
Fame is a lack of knowledge of the voters. That's the nicest way
that I can put that. A lack of understanding of the legacy of the
game. [8] "